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CaddisGraft
- Program: Biomedical Engineering
- Course: Clubs
- Year: 2025
Project Description:
With over 90% of cosmetic surgeries requiring the use of plastic-based meshes for soft tissue support and securing implants, the risk of introducing microplastics and their subsequent adverse health effects runs high. It is clear that there is a need for a bio-based alternative. We propose a silk-based mesh, dubbed Caddisgraft, to solve this issue. Caddisfly silk is a wet adhesive secreted by aquatic caddisfly larvae to protect against the elements, and thus boasts a high tensile strength, biodegradability and non-cytotoxic properties. Our team hopes to develop a yeast strain capable of expressing caddisfly silk for purification and mass production into Caddisgraft surgical meshes. This yeast strain would be created through a novel synthesis method that stitches together highly repetitive silk protein motifs until the desired number of repeats is reached. Ultimately, Caddisgraft hopes to reduce post-operative pain and encourage better tissue regrowth in cosmetic surgery patients.
Project Photo:
Cover for CaddisGraft
Student Team Members
- Lucy Wu
- Katie Hong
- Alex Dong
- Sophia Xu
- Siyona Mishra
- Justin Blumenthal
- Kalen Clifton